Healthcare providers tend to lean toward vendors they know when looking for help with their RAC audits, according to a new report from research firm KLAS. Vendors with strong revenue cycle, health information management or case management install bases are leveraging their previous business relationships with customers to win RAC solution contracts.
The most-considered vendor was HealthPort, considered 23 percent of the time, followed by MediRegs at 16 percent and 3M at 14 percent. ACS Midas+, the Advisory Board Company, Compliance 360, the greater New York Hospitals Association, Ingenix, MedAssets, and several other vendors are also highlighted in the report.
"More than half of interviewed providers considered only one vendor – a curious finding, given that there were 29 different RAC vendors chosen in this sampling," said Paul Pitcher, KLAS research director and author of the report. "For example, nearly 90 percent of those who considered MediRegs chose MediRegs."
He added that "many other vendors offer RAC solutions, but their lack of traction in the RAC market illustrates the influence of that prior relationship with providers."
In addition to previous experience with the vendor, the report indicates that providers highly prize a solution's ability to perform audits outside the RAC sphere. Most vendors covered in the study claim to have at least some capability in this area, and many providers report using their solutions to manage non-RAC more often than RAC requirements.
For the report, RAC Management Vendors: Early Leaders Among Rising Awareness, KLAS randomly selected 98 provider organizations looking for a commercially available solution to support the RAC process. Of these, the vast majority (92 percent) had already made their choice, enabling KLAS to monitor both considered and selected solutions.